Wow!:eek:
The sad thing is, people will believe the spin control the GOP will put on this.
Can someone tell me why the “right” was foaming at the mouth and saying really nasty things about poor little Jamie Lynn Spears and now they are just fine with this Bristol child as Daughter of the Second Family, a role model for young women in America?
Although truthfully I wouldn’t know Ms. Spears if she jumped up and bit me on the ankle, I think she got trashed awfully severely when her pregnancy was announced. And her mother!!! My god, her mother practically had battery acid poured over her. The foaming-at-the-mouth and spittle-flecked condemnation of that family!
I think that what the Democrats have to learn to do is the “denial” and “refuse to admit” dance the Republicans do so very well. If a criticism is made about a Democrat, or some unpleasant fact surfaces, the Democrats persist in trying explain the situation, they persist in trying to make people understand - they act and speak as if they are rational themselves and expect that everyone else is.
The Republicans know better. They know what the attention span of the “average Joe” is. They GET it. They have complete and utter contemptible confidence that people really are that stupid. Millions of them have the attention span of gnats - and millions of them don’t really care about the serious issues facing the USA, they want reassurance and comfort and the happy certainty that things are going to chug along as they always have.
I really hope the Democrats get this now. The gloves are off, like in a hockey game - and I hope the Democrats have learned from the Republicans, who play the dirtiest hockey I’ve ever seen. The Broad Street Bullies and all the other hockey goons I’ve seen have nothing on these people.
In Canada the words “hockey mom” are a code. The code means: the kind of mother every coach dreads, who is delusional about her son’s ability and NEVER stops demanding that he get more playing time. Who sees the kid as a ticket to big money in the NHL. The kind of mother who screams at her son to “spear the little bastard” when he’s on the ice. The kind of mother who is glad to see her son’s rival lying on the ice with a concussion, who has no qualms about seeing her son injure another player, and who is GLAD he injures the other player if it takes him out of the game.
Now it may be that up there in Alaska the words “hockey mom” mean something else. But I don’t think so.
You know, there is a certain irony in watching supporters of known plagiarist Joe Biden complain that Sarah Palin’s words were not her own!
Obama is not planning a huge tax raise., But do you have any plans for the national debt. Clinton fixed it and the cut taxes and spend repubs screwed it up again. It jeopardizes the financial structure of the nation. Just the interest on the national debt will cripple us for years. Do you think a 10 billion dollar a month war should be a free ride?
Ah…the false Biden “plagiarism” accusation. An oldy but an oldy.
CanvasShoes, you’re seriously buying into a line of bullshit if you believe Obama’s tax plan will hurt you. Here’s the AFL-CIO debunking that with a nice little graphic to boot. There’s even a handy tax estimator that allows you to figure up your estimated taxes under the Obama plan–try it,then get back to us on the results. Obama also wants to end the Iraq war, freeing up something like 120 billion dollars a year to use for something useful and worthwhile.
The bottom line is that Bush and McCain want to give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country, and to corporations. The reason for this is simple–they’re both rich as hell and all their families and friends own corporations. Under Bush, the disparity between the highest and lowest paid employees of most corporations has grown incredibly, but the problem is that rich people are miserably bad at keeping money moving. See, everybody has the same physical needs–we all need to eat our three meals a day, we need a roof over our heads, we need to get around. Rich people can’t eat more than poor people, they can only occupy one bed in a night and they can only drive one car at a time–therefore they can’t really spend the high amounts of money they receive in any meaningful way. They can only spend MORE to buy the same basic amounts of stuff the rest of us do. The economy is infinitely better off if millions of people have a few thousand more dollars to spend in a year than if a few hundred rich people have many more millions. The middle class and poor people will spread that money around to local businesses, small charities, they will keep the economy moving at the ground level and keep the money circulating. Rich people who have too much money just stash it away, making it less available for the economy to use. Or they put it into the stock market, which again doesn’t do much for the basic economy–it only makes shareholders happy, and they tend to reinvest it in the market again.
Don’t buy the bullshit, economically speaking John McCain is NOT your friend. Rich people cry about how “unfair” higher tax brackets for them are, but the plain fact is that money is different depending on how much you have. Consider the difference ten percent makes for someone who has ten dollars to last the week compared to someone with a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, etc. When you put it in those terms, you see that the person at the very bottom will be hungry at the end of the week, a couple of people in the middle might be hungry at the end of the week, but at the higher end there’s effectively no difference if you take away ten percent–and who really wants to argue what’s “fair” when you look at it in those terms? The person with ten grand to make it to Friday is an asshole if they’re making a big deal out of only having to get by on nine grand–but that thousand bucks could double the income of a hundred people who only have ten bucks.
And that’s what society is all about. Saying, y’know, I could buy another boat to go along with the one I already own or another car or a 10000 sf house because my 8000 sf house just isn’t big enough for me–or I could scale back so little that I’ll never even miss it and help out a whole buncha people who aren’t doing as well as I am. Shit, even if the only motive is to prevent poor people from breaking in and stealing your shit or mugging you every time you go out, it’s still a sensible thing to do. And this attitude isn’t just for the rich–I’m on unemployment right now and haven’t had health insurance for years, but when the Oregon Health Plan opened up a lottery to take in 3000 new patients, I didn’t even apply for it, simply because I’m in pretty good health overall and there are thousands out there who need it more than I do. Am I entitled to apply? Absolutely. Do I pay taxes to support the OHP? You bet I do. But is it RIGHT for a healthy person to take up a slot that could be used for someone with chronic life threatening conditions? Not in my book, but that’s why I’m Democrat.
Get beyond the talking points and you’ll notice that the McCain campaign and the Republicans have NO FACTS to back up their assertions that Obama’s going to tax us all into the poorhouse. To put it into the simplest possible terms, they are LYING. But don’t take my word on it–can we agree that the Wall Street Journalmight be a good source for knowledge regarding money matters? I’m assuming anyone smart enough to be on this board is also smart enough to do some very basic research and not unthinkingly buy into every snotty talking point a losing politician throws out to try to sway the low information voters. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and Obama’s basic tax plan has been readily available on his website for over a year, it has been praised by many responsible people whose entire job it is to juggle figures and get the right answer, and the Republicans are offering nothing to accurately refute Obama’s claim that his tax plan will help the vast majority of Americans.
Damn, that’s a killer analysis, well done!
As for the rest of your post, although I can’t disagree with your view on Republican tactics, I have to go along with Obama’s tactic of raising the level of discourse and doing things a better way. The problem with the Republican tactics is that they’re all about WINNING. Obama’s tactics are all about FIXING WHAT’S BROKEN. He wants to govern, McCain wants to win the election. It’s patently obvious when you look at their relative stances on issues–McCain has nothing beyond the shallowest of talking points–there’s no substance to his plans. If he wins, he just sits behind the desk and the REAL work gets done by the same slate of Republican operatives that run things right now. Same with Palin–they’re not concerned about her inability to be an effective president or VP, because to them it’s not necessary–they have people to do that for the figureheads.
What the Dems and Obama are doing right now has nothing to do with swaying those hardcore fundie, social conservative, low information voters who won’t be swayed from their basic (and pointless) issues. What the Dems are after is all about getting those who up until now haven’t bothered to vote off their asses and energized. That’s what the 50 state campaign is all about–to get the election race out of the media, where the Repubs want to run it, and back onto the ground, where neighbors talk to neighbors and get them out to the polling places. This way, the Repubs can go ahead and whip their 50 million usual suspects into a frothing mass–and if only 100 million get out to vote that’s usually enough. But if the Dems get another 20 or 30 million out there to vote Democratic, those frothing maniacs will be irrelevant, just as they are in day to day life.
Also, it’s just time to stop it with this artificial division between D and R that pops up every goddamned four years. When it comes down to it, we’re all basically the same–we want to have a job that pays well enough to make the bills and a few luxuries, we want our kids to get good educations, we want to send those kids to college, we want our houses and persons to be safe from damage and interference both from criminals AND law enforcement, we want to have some fairly good assurance that we’re safe to walk around, we want to be healthy and feel good. This election is all about getting people to THINK about what they REALLY want and use their judgement to decide who’s more likely to get them what they want and need.
Elections are like UFC matches–the crowd gets all riled up with vicarious bloodlust, cheering when somebody bleeds or breaks a bone. That same kind of damage and a fight of that magnitude playing out in a cubicle farm on a Tuesday morning would make those same people freak out and probably throw up. The idea is not to let this election become a sick brawl to sate the bloodlust of the masses, it’s to bring the process back to what’s really important–deciding where our country is going to go for the next four years. Obama’s not going to get down and dirty, and even though I’m a scrapper with no fear of nastiness I have to agree that we need to change the way we do things–starting with our election process.
Be honest, Dio. The Kinnock accusation was inaccurate, the law student one was accurate. But minor enough.
I am with you.
Bush was a Governer of a Large state and a right winger. Is our country better off with him than MCCain? 
I wonder why McCain picked someone just like the guy he says he is opposite of,was he thinking?
Monavis
Who is Sarah Palin? We could ask a local.
http://www.crosscut.com/politics-government/17341
Trust me, worth reading.
Wow, so you found an enemy of hers (all reformers have enemies) willing to say bad things about her and spin everything she’s done in a negative light.
If she’s so horrible, why is she wildly popular in Wasillia? Why is she wildly popular in the state?
Will you give equal consideration if one of her many fans writes an op-ed saying why she’s really good at what she does?
Sure, get me a nicely reasoned article from a local fan, would you? One with this level of detail? Now, I know as well as you do that there aren’t always two sides to every story, and the truth isn’t always somewhere in the middle. I’d also love to hear some defense for the sports complex and roads issue.
But yeah, I’m listening. This does seem to be an amazingly well written article, though.
Rat, uncool.
For the same reason Hitler was popular?
Sam it might help if you address the points that the author made rather than just do an ad hominem.
Yeah, I can see why someone who speaks well and looks attractive and who spends a short term windfall by passing out the dollars (Party today!) instead of investing it responsibly in the future and who has fired any one who might speak out against her and painted those who cannot be fired as crooks (easy to do since so many the politicos there are) just might be popular in the short term. Remember that Bush had approval ratings in the upper 80’s once upon a time too.
I’ll give equal consideration to the facts presented by whoever presents them. I’ll address the facts presented and maybe fact check them and come to a conclusion based on those facts whether they come from a fan or a foe.
I’ve done it before and I’ll keep doing it. Right now it is your turn. Are the facts presented false? Are her conclusions about Palin not justified based on those facts? Address the meat not who is delivering the sandwich.
Palin brought 11.9 millions to Wasilia over three years. I suspect that yes, she probably was popular, with the business community in particular. Probably not so much with the working poor, since she raised municipal sales tax, even on food.
Keep beating on that dead horse. Maybe it will come back to life.
I’ve finally figured out who Sarah Palinis…CLICK HERE
Listening to Palin, I’ve concluded she is Lucille Tarlek with ugly glasses.
The Kilkenny letter is now up on Snopes. This is an interesting development, if it means that Palin information is starting to float around the internet via email – a medium much more commonly used for right-wing anti-Obama content.
So this is sort of like SwiftBoating, but with actual facts. The irony is delicious.
Much more commonly used for right-wing content? You have got to be kidding.